Barnabas File

A recent news report explained that a school district in Mississippi had removed Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird from a middle school reading list because the book's language "makes people uncomfortable."  I am offended by this on two levels.  First, this is one of my favorite books.  The book and film that came from it both challenged my prejudices and gave me hope for a better society.  Second, we need to read things that make us uncomfortable.  If we only read those who agree with us, we stagnate.  Listening to others’ ideas and experiences help us to grow. As my friend John Tyler posted on Facebook in response to this report: “If I followed this ‘thinking’ at home, I'd pull all my Bibles from the shelves. Most of what Jesus says, as reported on the Bible's pages, makes me uncomfortable. Learning, growing, and adopting new perspectives and behaviors can be painful experiences.  Very often, change and pain...

One of my favorite writers on the church and faith in the 21 st century is Tom Ehrich.   In a recent post in his On the Road series, Ehrich wrote this: "The longer I study Scripture, wrestle with ethical issues, write about God, and pray to God, the more I realize that God is a wild one. Not the least predictable or controllable. Not the steady rock I have wanted God to be, but a wild-flowing stream that carries me along to the life God wants me to live. Sometimes I cling to a passing tree, or make landfall and think I have arrived, or buy a big boat to master the current. But the river flows on, and all of my efforts to make it manageable and pleasant don't deter God from doing what God wants to do." These prophetic words speak to me as an individual as a member of the body of Christ. I discovered several years ago that God will not allow me to become comfortable.   In my late forties and early fifties, I experienced what I refer to as “the decade from H...